Deep Work

“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love — is the sum of what you focus on.” -Cal Newport

Deep Work by Cal Newport, in combination with Essentialism by Greg McKeown, have made significant impact on my ability to focus on the things that matter most to me. I want to review a few of the key takeaways from this book that have helped me to improve the way I focus.

For context, I am currently in my second semester of my MBA, taking more than a full-time load of classes, helping to recreate the curriculum of a people analytics course, doing photography side jobs, trying to be a good husband, working with cub scouts and seeking to meet a number of other personal and professional goals(including weekly blog posts:). I’m sure there are many who are busier than I but I have enough to make it important to maximize my time.

The overall message of this book is that for much of the today’s knowledge work success requires intentional focus for an extended period of time. As we are all aware, we also live in a world that is increasingly seeking to fracture our attention. Deep work is when we fully engage our attention in what matters most.

Focus divided

Deep work is is the result of focus and while we can multi-task, we can’t multi-focus. Most of us are aware of the war that is going on for our focus. As I sit down to write this I have competing interests pulling at my attention:

• Text messages coming in
• Facebook notifications
• Cleaning that needs to happen
• Homework I just remembered I need to do

And the list goes on. In order to get to a place of deep work we need to find ways to focus our attention on what matters most and find ways to eliminate distractions that would pull us away.

One of the key findings of this book is that the greatest success comes from keeping our attention focused on one thing for a prolonged period of time. Trying to write while occasionally responding to email, and peaking at Facebook leads for me to ineffective in everything that I am doing.

Scheduling

In order to reach a state of deep work, we have to set aside time for it.

In my current schedule I have been able to set aside Monday’s and Fridays as work from home days, and to concentrate the majority of my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This strategy allows me to focus two days on classroom learning, one day on group meetings and interactions on campus, and to start and end the week with days of deep work. Often I have homework done Monday, focus on school and social Tuesday to Thursday and tie up loose ends and do personal work Friday.

A key aspect of scheduling deep work is to do it at the time of day when you focus the best. I have found that I focus best in the morning, and more particularly after exercise(Read Spark by John J. Ratey for more detail on this). Because of this I reserve the morning hours for the work that is most important to me and that which requires the most deep thinking.

Respect

Once you have found when you focus best and you have scheduled your most important work during that time, it is essential to respect those boundaries of time and activity. Here are some practices that I have found to be successful:

• Start with a list — it really helps me to start with a list of everything I want to get done that day. When small things come up, instead of taking a few minutes to do them, I just add them to the list. This allows my mind to stop giving them attention.
• Small task time— writing them is not doing them so I also set aside a portion of my schedule to get small tasks done. Put this at a portion of the day when you know your energy is low and focus will be hard.
• Turn off notifcations — During my first few hours of work during the day I close my email, put my phone out of reach and let myself fully invest in my most important task.

There are many other ways to do this, the key is to find ways that you can respect the most important tasks you have and to give them your full attention.

Dopamine

I do not claim to be on expert in neuroscience, but a small insight on dopamine has been a catalyst to my individual success in focus. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is involved in the motivation system of the brain. The simple way I see it is that certain activities trigger a release of dopamine which feels good and makes us want to do that thing again.

The key issue here is that we can get a burst of dopamine for small meaningless activities and modern technology has found ways to exploit this. We get lost in the thick of thin things and we feel good with the little burst of dopamine throughout the day from getting an email, getting something done when it comes to mind, clearing notifications off our phone, etc. This steals our attention from what is most important and leaves us feeling unfufilled and our key work incomplete.

Simply recognizing that this is why I keep opening my email, pulling out my phone, etc. has helped me to let go of these activities and focus on what matters most. I now allow myself to stop and enjoy a quite moment without checking my notifications, and to ignore them to get something done that really matters. I then focus these small activities during a time in the day when I have low energy(right after lunch for me), getting them all done at once and a much needed boost of energy.

I have found the by setting a schedule in place, respecting that schedule, and understanding myself better I have been able to focus on what matters most and feel truly fulfilled. I highly recommend this book for a deeper look into some of these ideas.